How Is Rehab Helpful After an Intervention?

Rehab is a major step in getting an addict back out into the world and free from drugs. It’s not the final step because every single day for the rest of the addict’s life they fight to keep themselves clean and everything in check. It becomes easier as time goes on, but they all began with an intervention, went through detox, and then continued through rehab, their final bit of professional help before reentering the world.

Why is rehab so helpful

After detox, when the patient has had their blood detoxified of their vice, there’s one stop to finish their high-grade levels of professional help: rehab. (Sober companions are also a viable option post-rehab. However, they are not mandatory.) It’s the last controlled gateway from ridding yourself of the addiction and being let out back into the world. In a sense, it’s the most important part of the recovery process. It can only do so much to help an addict reenter society, but if done properly, it can provide excellent services even after the patient has left the rehab’s care. What really makes a rehab so important?

Different Facilities

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all rehabilitation center. Different facilities specialize in different rehabilitation processes and can be better suited to dealing with a specific kind of addiction: opium, heroin, cocaine, and et cetera. There are also specific rehab centers for alcohol addiction.

The biggest factor of any facility, and the golden rule that goes for addiction recovery, is that someone who doesn’t want to get clean, simply won’t. You can’t force someone to change their lifestyle. Rehab specialists can help anyone who’s committed to recovery, as well as their aides. Different facilities have different programs; selecting the right one is extremely important.

Why Rehab Is so Beneficial: The Whole Family

Nobody wants to sit by and watch their loved one or best friend wither away due to drug or alcohol addiction. When you’ve had to go through years of watching your loved one just fade away, this can put a strain on the entire atmosphere, and leave it stained. As an interventionist, I’ve walked into multiple scenarios where the air is thick and toxic with a carousel of emotions.

Rehab looks like the pearly gates to many family members and friends of an addict. It’s the physical location where change will take place; it looks like a shining beacon. However, this is all false if you’re committed someone against their will. The addict actually has to have the desire to get clean, even if it’s due to ultimatums delivered in an intervention.

If your loved one isn’t at an outpatient rehab center, they’ll be staying for the long haul, which means that the family has some time to try and heal from everything that’s been going on. There’s no selfishness in feeling hurt and betrayed, so long as you understand that your loved one who is suffering from addiction is undergoing something that you hopefully will never understand. It’s a very fine line in a gray area, all the way through. You’ve been effected as well, but you are going through two very separate experiences.

Why Rehab Is So Beneficial: The Patient

While it may seem clear, it’s actually a lot more complicated than you may think. Rehabs aren’t simply a big waiting room that serves you dinner where you wait to rid yourself of the need to cling back to your vice. It’s teaching you to rebuild your life and helping you find mechanisms you can use once you’ve been released to ensure you’ll stay on the no-drug path.

Different facilities offer different programs, but you’ll find some that have post-stay wellness visits up to a year after release. It all depends on what the addiction consists of and the personality of your loved one.

They’ve been delivered ultimatums through an intervention; that is the family’s choice. They’ve undergone the harshness of detox; that is their choice, but a difficult one to make. Detox can be hell. Going between detox and rehab is a frightening step, especially if they’ll be staying within the rehab until the treatment is over. However, the benefits outweigh everything else.

Habits are all about structure, as crazy as that sounds. There is one constant: a vice. That’s their structure. With rehab, they teach you how to build from the ground up, and create a new structure; healthy habits, daily activities to keep yourself in check. It’s learning how to live again without a ball and chain around your ankle.

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How Does Rehab Help To Build Structure?

Each facility is different in how it conducts its restructuring program. They all share one common thread; getting a rhythm back to your life. No matter what you do, there’s a system to it. If you’re a businessman, you wake up Monday through Friday, don the suit, go to work. The only thing that’s going to stop that is having the balance thrown out of whack.

Rehab helps you develop new, safe habits, and a rhythmic routine to follow once you’ve reentered society. It can boil down to the small things, such as maintaining an appropriate sleeping pattern, involving new diets in your life, and so much more. It’s not just important to implement a series of structure; it’s critical to the recovery process.

Does Rehab Erase A Person’s Addiction?

Absolutely not. When you hear someone showcasing that they received their one-year token, there’s a great deal of pride. The beast is still telling them to go back to their lives. I know a few people who have been clean for well over a decade, and when they write about what it was like to be addicted in the hopes of helping someone, they can feel the desire returning in full force. No matter what, when someone gets clean, they need structure and time to get to a place where it’s no longer a constant. Just like with grief, it gets easier to deal with from passing time, though it never truly goes away.

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How Else Is Rehab Helpful?

You’ve delved into a space with others who have gone through what you have, as well as being put under the best care imaginable to help you get back on your feet. It’s also a confusing time. You’re being detoxed from your vice, but now what? It’s still on your mind on a pretty constant basis. Your environment is there to help you, keep you occupied, and slowly push out the craving through restructuring.

For outpatient rehab programs, you’re able to go home to your family at the end of each day, which can definitely help with the healing process. If there’s someone that’s been stolen from or lied to, it’s a good chance for apologies and discussing everything that’s been going on. It’s also a good time to discuss your long-term plan for how you’re going to stay clean. Is your cousin going to drive you to and from meetings? Will your brother ensure you never go near your previous crowd and get roped back into your vice?

Rehab doesn’t create an at-home support system, but it does kickstart it. There are going to be a lot of changes once an addict returns home full-time, including getting started in the workplace, maintaining rhythms and habits they learned in rehab, and regularly attending meetings or other forms of aid, such as therapy or visits to a psychologist. There’s no one single plan that’s right for everyone. It takes a culmination of skills and strategy that will ultimately lead to an effective long-term plan.

Once It’s Out of Their Hands

Getting that perfect living situation, (or at least once that isn’t toxic to your recovery process,) is key. There will be helpful advice and information on how to identify certain components of your living situation, and evaluate them to see if you’re making the whole journey to a clean life that much harder on yourself. Rehabs offer information that you can use as tools to navigate your new path.

Rehab can’t do everything for you. It’s the primer before the paint goes on. A healthy lifestyle and support groups are ahead, and while many don’t put a lot of value in support groups, it’s saved many from going back down the rabbit hole. You’ll be given self-evaluation tools to look at yourself and down the road, and prevent a relapse from ever occurring.

Preventing Relapse

Often, you can revisit the tools you learned how to use from your stay in rehab, ways to look at your life now and your life then. The need to return to the safety of what you used to know can feel like it’s overtaking you entirely, and that’s when you’re looking a relapse dead in the face. It all depends on how you proceed to prevent it.

There could be one-hundred paths to take, with ninety-nine of them leading to ruin. There are times to reach out to others, apart from just your support group. Your family understands that this is going to be a difficult journey for you, and have poised themselves to be your support system. While it wasn’t an option before, you can lean on them now. Rehab teaches you how to open up and rely on others to help you, rather than the alternative: a relapse.

Apart from simply being able to recognize when a relapse is on the encroaching horizon, rehabs also teach you how to have the strength in yourself to say “No, I don’t need that,” and walk away a stronger person. It’s not an easy task. There’s no simple way to go about it, but with the help of rehab it becomes possible. If you know that you’re weak to temptation, the tools they give you in rehab are absolutely crucial in maintaining your “new you” in the world.

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Sober Companion

This is a service offered by some rehabs. A sober companion can help bring you to and from meetings and stay on the lookout for any signs of relapse or negative behavior. It only takes a few small mistakes to slip back into your old world, but a sober companion can help prevent that. They can hang out with you during the off hours, when there’s no meetings to attend, and keep your mind focused.

They’re sometimes referred to as “walking, talking rehabs,” and for good reason. They help keep your head clear and straight while you’re out and about. Sober companions aren’t preachers; they’ve been in your shoes before, and they know what they’re doing. They’ve endured the restructuring process as well, and understand what you’re going through emotionally, physically and psychologically, to the best of their ability. They also understand that no two cases are the same.

How to Know Which Rehab Is Right for You

It can be a tricky decision, and no two rehabs are made equal. An interventionist can better describe which type of rehab you’ll need depending on your circumstances, exposure, and what the drug in question is. While all rehabs are there to help in every single way that they can, some are simply better equipped to handle certain things than others. Contact a dedicated treatment expert today to find out more.

AddictionCenter.com is a referral service that provides information about addiction treatment practitioners and facilities. AddictionCenter.com is not a medical provider or treatment facility and does not provide medical advice. AddictionCenter.com does not endorse any treatment facility or guarantee the quality of care provided, or the results to be achieved, by any treatment facility. The information provided by AddictionCenter.com is not a substitute for professional treatment advice.